Al Shifa is one of the few partially operating health facilities in northern Gaza (file photo)
Israeli forces laid siege to two other Gaza hospitals on Sunday, overwhelming medical teams under heavy fire, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. Israel says it has captured 480 Hamas members during ongoing clashes at Gaza’s main Al Shifa hospital.
Israel says hospitals in the Palestinian enclave, where the war has raged for more than five months, are being used as bases for Hamas operations. It released videos and images supporting the claim.
Hamas and medical personnel deny the accusations.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said one staff member was killed when Israeli tanks suddenly retreated into the area around Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis amid heavy shelling and gunfire.
The military said Israeli forces began operating around Amal after “accurate intelligence indicated that terrorists were using civilian infrastructure to carry out terrorist activities in the Amal region.”
The Red Crescent said in a statement that Israeli armored forces blocked the Amal hospital and carried out a large-scale bulldozing operation near it.
“All of our teams are currently in extreme danger and completely immobilized,” the statement said.
The Red Crescent said Israeli forces were now demanding a complete evacuation of Amal hospital staff, patients and displaced people, and were firing smoke grenades into the area to force its personnel to evacuate.
The Red Crescent said in a later update that a displaced Palestinian was hit in the head by Israeli fire and died in a hospital.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli forces detained dozens of patients and medical staff in Shifa, Gaza City, north of the enclave, which has been under Israeli control for a week.
The Hamas-run government media office said Israeli forces killed five Palestinian doctors during a seven-day raid on Shifa.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. The group earlier said it killed more than 170 gunmen in the attack, and the Palestinian Health Ministry said the attack also killed five patients.
Al Shifa is one of the few partially operating health facilities in northern Gaza, and like others, it has been providing shelter to some of the nearly 2 million civilians (more than 80% of Gaza’s population) displaced by the war .
“Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are currently setting up roadblocks in Shifa hospital wards,” said Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
Hamas gunmen fired at soldiers from the hospital’s emergency room and delivery room and fired mortars at soldiers inside the hospital, causing damage, Hagari said.
The Hamas-run government media office said it “categorically refutes this.”
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the media office, said: “How can they claim that when their soldiers are roaming and playing with ease in the complex, interrogating the displaced, the sick and the wounded? at this point.”
Airstrike kills seven in Rafah
Reuters has been unable to gain access to the disputed hospital area in Gaza and verify the accounts of both parties.
Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli forces were also advancing under heavy air and ground fire and had formed a cordon around the Nasser Hospital in the west of the city.
An Israeli airstrike on a house killed seven people in Gaza’s southernmost Egyptian border town of Rafah, which has become the last refuge for half of Gaza’s displaced, health officials said.
Israel’s air and ground offensive on densely populated coastal areas has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians since October 7, 84 of them in the past 24 hours, the Israeli Health Ministry said in the latest update on Sunday. Deaths, 74,518 injured.
Israel launched the offensive after Hamas-led Islamist militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli statistics.
U.S.-backed mediation between Qatar and Egypt has so far failed to achieve a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the release of prisoners and unrestricted aid to Gaza civilians facing famine, with both sides insisting on core demands.
Hamas wants any truce to include an Israeli commitment to end the war and withdraw its troops from Gaza. Israel has ruled out this possibility and said it will continue to fight until Hamas is eliminated as a political and military force.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the backlog of aid shipments to Gaza a moral outrage during a visit to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing on Saturday.
Speaking in Cairo on Sunday, Guterres said the only effective and efficient way to deliver heavy cargo to meet humanitarian needs in Gaza was by road.
The United States and other countries have tried to deliver aid using airdrops and ships, but U.N. aid officials say aid can only be scaled up by land and accuse Israel of obstructing rescue efforts, which Israel denies.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
